


Heart's Blood

by ShannonPhillips



Series: A Little Less Attitude and a Little More Altitude [9]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Animal Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 01:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6402721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/pseuds/ShannonPhillips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few months after escaping the Imperial Academy with Ketsu Onyo, Sabine hunts for a token of affection worthy of Ketsu.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart's Blood

**Author's Note:**

> I had the seed for this story in a dream, following a conversation with [gondalsqueen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen). And I'm very grateful as always for her perspective and encouragement.
> 
> This is not a sweet or fluffy story. The genre is closer to angst, although that's not quite it either. I dunno—if you read it, tell me in the comments how I should tag it!

Sabine was on the hunt. Fully armored and armed to the teeth—yet she felt more vulnerable than at any other moment in the months since she’d left the Academy. For most of that time she’d kept to the Outer Rim. And she’d had Ketsu.

Now she was on Corsucant, and alone. Galactic City’s remorseless winds shrieked around her, a noise so painful she was forced to mute her helmet’s aural sensors. Losing one of her senses only added to the risk. The Core Worlds were dangerous for a young deserter-turned-bounty hunter: especially one with no reputation, and now, no backup.

Sabine swung herself down to a lower girder. She’d found a narrow canyon between skytowers, and she needed to get deeper. In that secluded, shadowed gulch created by duralloy welds and transparisteel, she had a good chance of finding her prey. Although if it found her _first_ , she’d be in trouble.

She missed Ketsu—but that was kind of the point. This hunt had been Sabine’s idea. A way to find a word for the bond that had developed between them. In Basic she could call Ketsu _girlfriend_ or _sister_ but both felt false: one too flimsy, and the other too saccharine. _Partner, lover_ : if only there was a word that meant both. When she'd first locked eyes with Ketsu across a simulated battlefield Sabine had thought in Mando’a: _karstal._

Sabine swung from her fingertips, dropped a giddy story and landed hard on a narrow ledge. A sudden gust of wind came at exactly the wrong time, knocking her off the skytower and into the spinning void: good thing she’d brought a grappling round. She fired, and the maglock connected with the skytower even as Sabine herself went into freefall. A durasteel cable spun out, gradually slowing her fall and pulling her back down toward the skytower’s gleaming surface.

Her boots connected with a jolt, pain thudding through her legs and hips. She’d lowered herself another five stories in the fall—good. A click, and the maglock disconnected, the cable retracting for another use. Her heart was pounding in her ears.

 _Karstal_ was a modern form. Slang. In the older dialect it would be _kar'ta's tal--_ heart’s blood. The one who is blooded with you, by you; the one you bleed for. The ceremony to seal that bond involved an exchange of tokens—specifically, trophies from a hunt that was both dangerous and symbolically meaningful.

Sabine had been frozen at the Academy until Ketsu made her blood sing in her veins. Together they had found escape. Perhaps that’s why she thought of the tyrfalcon for Ketsu. A bird of prey, one that had adapted itself to the urban canyons of Galactic City and that was too fierce to be exterminated. Talons like knives and wings broad and strong as Ketsu’s own will to survive.

And if she’d had her aural band open, perhaps Sabine would have heard the tyrfalcon’s characteristic scream of warning before it attacked.

Instead, all she caught was a shadow. A sudden darkening of the mirrored surface she clung to. It might have been only a hovercar passing by overhead, but instinct told Sabine to _move_. She tucked into a backflip, kicking off from the building’s skin with as much force as she could muster and trusting to the power of the wind to give her the additional lift she’d need to cross the gulch.

In fact the winds gave her too much power: she was picked up and flung, hard, into the skytower that formed the other side of the urban canyon.  Her stunned fingers barely found purchase before she fell.

And in the space where she had been, there was a predator with a wingspan (several wingspans) larger than Sabine’s height. Its talons had slammed against the building, leaving long rakes in the mirrored transparisteel. It beat all four of its wings, its cruel curved beak opening in a silent shriek of rage and threat.

All Sabine needed was a handful of feathers. “I’m not going to hurt you!” she called across the gulf—uselessly. The tyrfalcon couldn’t hear her over the howling winds, and even if it could, it wouldn’t care. A creature that could scratch transparisteel could _definitely_ rip Sabine to shreds, armor or no. If she got close enough to grab any feathers, it would be last thing she ever did.

But if the tyrfalcon was here, then its nest must be close too. Sabine switched to infrared visuals and punched in the commands that would mark the bird as a hostile target on her visor display. At least she’d get 360 degree awareness of its movements.

And—there. Her infrared sensors were picking up a soft source of warmth, about ten stories farther down. The nest. She could get her feathers there, if she was fast enough.

The flashing red targeting icon that represented the tyrfalcon left Sabine’s peripheral vision, and was replaced by a rhythmic beeping that receded behind her right ear. The tyrfalcon was circling, almost certainly preparing for another attack dive.

Well, the fastest route to any destination is a straight line. And the line between her and the nest led _down_. So Sabine fired her grappling round again…and jumped.

Unfortunately, the winds made a straight dive impossible. They picked her up as she fell, swirled her around and tried to fling her back against the skytower with bone-breaking force. Sabine, mid-spin, clicked the maglock free—the only hope she could see for avoiding a lethal impact was if she could retract the grappling round in time for another shot, perhaps stabilizing herself against the opposite skytower.

But the cable, as it retracted, was caught in the winds as well. It whipped around Sabine, cutting deeply into her upper arm—at least it wasn’t her neck. And…at least she hadn’t been crushed against a building yet?

A glance skyward, and Sabine saw what had happened. The tyrfalcon had been diving for her and it had been caught, too: the bird’s legs were bound up in one end of the cable now, and from the other end dangled Sabine.

The tyrfalcon’s many wings beat frantically, but it held her aloft. It seemed able to navigate the winds effortlessly: it held its position in the air, snapping its wicked beak at the cable that constricted it. Sabine, still swinging wildly, tried to shut down the mounting signals of pain from her arm and reacquire her target. The nest was _there_ —she grabbed for it as she was tossed near, came away with nothing but managed to gain some control over her trajectory with a kick off the skytower’s surface. There. _There_. Closer now—she grabbed again, catching a fistful of something—

—and abruptly went into freefall again as the tyrfalcon finally succeeded in biting through the cable. In a momentary lull between gusts of winds she fell twenty meters. Then a sudden updraft caught her: Sabine tucked herself into the wind, managing just a slight alteration in the course of her fall, and landed hard against a protruding ledge.

It was an access to a maintenance hatch. Nobody with the means to live in one of these gleaming skytowers would ever expose themselves to the screaming winds and the sun’s harsh radiation, but _somebody_ had to come out from time to time to hose off the birdshit.

For a moment Sabine just gasped, every breath knifing into her lungs. Then she rolled over gently, pushing up with one arm. The other shoulder was dislocated, she was pretty sure. And her fist was clenched around something. She pried her fingers open, then made a wheezing gasp that would have been laughter if the pain wasn’t so bad.

In her palm lay three tyrfalcon feathers.

***

“Wow,” Ketsu said, when Sabine showed her the feathers. “How big was that thing?”

“Bigger than me,” Sabine said. “And its talons left gouges in transparisteel.”

“Wow,” Ketsu said again. “And you thought of that for me?”

“Yeah.” Sabine gave a small smile and a little shrug, to show that it meant something but she didn’t need to make a big deal about it. “Because you’re strong, and free, and you can go anywhere you want.”

Ketsu looked back at her with softening eyes, and Sabine thought that maybe they would kiss, but then Ketsu drew back abruptly and said, “Well, mine’s in the cargo bay. I got back before you.”

It was a big crate, but fully sealed—no air holes—and there was a little bit of a knot in Sabine’s stomach even before Ketsu opened it with a proud flourish and gusts of chill air clouded around them. “Oh,” Sabine said, staring down at the dead sand panther with its glazed-over eyes. There was frost on the tips of its brilliant white pelt; it must have been damp before it went into cold storage. "Oh."

“It’s a silver-furred Corellian sand panther,” Ketsu said.

“I know,” Sabine answered softly. “It’s—it’s beautiful.” It would have been beautiful.

They were silent for a moment. “Its coloring is very rare," Ketsu said finally. "Like yours, get it? And I dunno how much of it you want for this blood-sister ceremony, but whatever’s left over we should sell on the black market, because bags and stuff made from sand panther pelts are very illegal and _very_ lucrative.”

“Yeah,” Sabine said. “Okay.” Its death shouldn’t be wasted.

Funny how she had never even considered killing the tyrfalcon. And Ketsu had just as clearly never considered leaving the sand panther alive.

Kar’ta’s tal. Heart’s blood is not drawn without pain. When would she stop being such a child?

“What’s wrong?” Ketsu demanded, an edge of impatience entering her voice.

Sabine looked up and forced a smile. “Nothing,” she said. “I need a bacta patch for my shoulder, I think.”

“Honey, you’re not the Empire’s golden girl anymore,” Ketsu said—but the edge was gone, and her tone was gentle. “We don’t have fancy stuff like bacta patches. I think there might be some kolto if you scrape the bottom of the medkit.”

“That’s fine,” Sabine said. “That’s all I need.”

Ketsu laid a warm hand on her cheek. “Maybe when we sell the sand panther pelt, we can buy some bacta.”

Sabine smiled, a little wider and a little more genuine. “We’ll make do,” she said.

Then Ketsu dropped her hand, turning away to close up the crate. The last Sabine saw of the sand panther, it was staring into darkness with unseeing eyes, cold blood congealed in the fist of its heart. 


End file.
